Every Final Girl In The Halloween Franchise, Ranked Worst To Best

Halloween Kills is stalking its way into theaters this October. Although she technically died in Halloween Resurrection, the film will mark the sixth time Jamie Lee Curtis has played the iconic Final Girl Laurie Strode, the strong and ferocious fighter who ably fends off the murderous Michael Myers time and again.

However, Laurie isn’t the only Final Girl in the franchise to triumph over the notorious masked killer, nor is Jamie Lee Curtis the only actress who has portrayed the character on the big screen. While some have shown more grit, courage, and steely determination than others, most of the Final Girls in the Halloween franchise have fought back to give Michael Myers all he can handle.

6 Ellie Gimbridge – Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (1982)

As the only entry in the Halloween franchise not to feature Michael Myers whatsoever, Ellie Gimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) becomes a Final Girl of a different, less impressive kind. Halloween III: Season of the Witch concerns a sinister mask maker peddling lethal brainwashing Silver Shamrock Halloween masks to children on All Hallows Eve.

When her father is murdered by shady figures in the beginning, Ellie is set up as the sympathetic female protagonist. As she teams with Daniel (Tom Atkins) to find answers, the two become embroiled in the evil plot to control children’s minds on Halloween. However, in the end Ellie reveals a startling secret that undermines her character as a Final Girl and leads to further mayhem. While she’s strong enough to outlast the other female characters and smart enough to trick Daniel, Ellie got off light by avoiding Michael Myers.

5 Sara Moyer – Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

While Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich) is the only female to technically survive Michael Myer’s homicidal onslaught in Halloween: Resurrection, she does so with the express assistance of Freddie (Busta Rhymes) and Deckard (Ryan Merriman), two men she thanks for saving her life at the end. While this decreases her overall stature, Sara shows enough gumption in the face of danger to evade her attacker.

The plot revolves around a gimmicky reality TV show contest where a group of college kids competes to stay inside Michael Myers’ childhood home for one night to determine the source of his murderous motives. Sara is a wily college student who manages to evade a prolonged chase in the house by Myers, doing just enough to avoid harm and remain alive long enough for the cavalry to come.

4 Kara Strode – Halloween 666: The Curse Of Michael Myers (1995)

Marianne Hagen plays Kara Strode, Laurie’s cousin, in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. Dwelling in the run-down Myers house with her family, Kara becomes Michael’s chief target when he escapes the Haddonfield hospital and exacts a string of creative kills.

While Kara ultimately depends on the help of Tommy to defeat Michael in the end, her strength in overcoming her mother, father, and brother’s death while protecting her son Danny from Michael is something to behold. Kara is the one who discovers Dr. Wynn’s evil cult-based experiments to clone Michael after rescuing the captive children in the hospital, making her instrumental in Danny’s survival as well as her own.

3 Angel Myers – Halloween (2007) & Halloween II (2009)

Angel Myers (Scout Taylor-Compton) is the female protagonist in Rob Zombie’s two Halloween outings. As Michael’s baby sister, Angel is forced to change her name from the familiar Laurie Strode in order to keep her baleful brother from finding and killing her as an adult.

When the plan fails and Michael arrives out for blood, Angel shows tremendous strength to fight back, foil his attacks, inflict damage to the seemingly impervious monster, and fully prevails at the end of the first film. After the guilt and trauma of the 2007 events leaves her with violent tendencies that mirror her brother’s, Angel summons the courage and power to kill Michael with his own trademark butcher knife in the sequel. While she triumphs as a fierce and ferocious Final Girl, it comes with a hefty personal toll.

2 Jamie Lloyd – Halloween 4 (1988) & Halloween 5 (1989)

Outside of Laurie Strode, the most ardent Halloween fans are sure to call Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) the best female character in the franchise. As Laurie’s orphaned daughter and Michael’s niece, the precocious 10-year-old girl outwits and outlasts Michael in both Halloween 4 and Halloween 5.

Jamie overcomes her past trauma and schoolyard bullying for being related to Michael Myers, only to have her homicidal uncle stalk her mercilessly and relentlessly. Jamie manages to survive one hyper-violent attack after another, but soon develops a strange kinship with Michael that lands her in the hospital. Stronger yet, Jamie scores extra points by being able to break the mental hold Michael has on her, plead for him to restore his humanity, and deliver him to authorities in the end. Jamie overcomes her own sense of evil as well as surviving Michael’s attacks, which makes her one of Michael’s strongest enemies and the second greatest Final Girl in the franchise behind her mother, Laurie.

1 Laurie Strode – Halloween (1978), Halloween II (1981), Halloween H20 (1998), Halloween (2018)

As the powerful Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s trailblazing slasher film Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis all but defined the terms Scream Queen and Final Girl for her fierce independence, resilience, self-agency, and immense courage to face her killer relative and triumph repeatedly.

While Laurie ultimately relies on Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) to defeat Michael in the original Halloween, Laurie never hews to the male order of events in the film. Moreover, Laurie is wise enough to refrain from such vulnerable horror movie tropes as getting drunk, partying obliviously, or any typical teenage conventions that end up costing her best friends their lives. Laurie represents a progressive Final Girl who, over the course of a 40-year arc, becomes an extremely self-sufficient survivalist in Halloween (2018) that relies on nobody but herself to remain safe. Beginning as a shy introverted teenager, Laurie has spent a lifetime steeling herself as the ultra-assertive and definitive horror movie Final Girl in the Halloween franchise and beyond.